Crowdfunding: US and UK

Athlyn Cathcart-Keays reports on the growing use of crowdfunding for neighborhood regeneration—and fun stuff like swimming in the Thames—in London, UK:

Architect Chris Romer-Lee had a wild idea: Why not turn part of the River Thames into a swimming pool?

To see if the “Thames Baths” could work, Romer-Lee and his firm, Studio Octopi, did what many creative people with an idea have done in recent years: They launched a campaign on the crowdfunding site Kickstarter. It was a rapid success. In less than a month, they raised more than £140,000, mostly in small donations. The money helped to pay for a pre-planning study.

The London city government has formed a “regeneration team” to help coordinate and encourage crowdfunding initiatives.

Crowdfunding for neighborhood improvement isn’t just for the British; the American nonprofit ioby sprung up from a partnership of three Yalies interested in localized sustainability work has raised over $2.3 million and funded 674 projects across the U.S., according to their website.